This documentary collection, continuing Yale's pioneering Annals of
Communism series, tackles questions surrounding the paroxysm of the purges in
1937-38. One thing Stalin had was a long memory, and the hitherto mysterious
Riutin Platform (the contents here at last seeing the light) must have rankled
him. The platform was a 1932 call by Bolshevik veterans to remove him. The
course culminating in the extirpation of all opposition was complex, and the
authors' commentary underscores that a politics of sorts continued up to the
point when full-blown terror was unleashed, a politics that pitted the central
apparatus of Stalin and his associates in Moscow against the regional party
bosses. The authors track one such Stalinist's fate in detail, as they do that
of Bukharin, Stalin's opponent in the 1920s. The 200 documents here will
astonish anyone familiar with the era, yet it is a specialized tome whose
public library appeal could be checked against the circulation stats for the
indubitably popular Who Killed Kirov? by Amy Knight [BKL My 15 99].